The present invention has for an object a hermetic connection assembly that can be used principally with severe environmental temperature and pressure stresses. It more particularly finds application in the field of marine geophysics, both for control of electric equipment to assist in drilling, arranged on the ocean floor, as well as for the feed, piloting and charting of measurements conducted by measuring devices lowered into drilled holes or also arranged on the ocean floor. While being designed for electrical connections, the invention remains applicable to optical or fluid connections.
The stresses that connection assemblies according to the invention must support are notably a temperature greater than 180.degree. and they are subjected to pressure greater than several tens of MegaPascals. With regard to tightness, one distinguishes between sealed devices and hermetic devices. Hermetic devices must be suitable for environments such as those cited above, while sealed devices only satisfy stresses one or more orders of magnitude below those cited above. Hermeticity is necessary, notably when one disconnects a connector, so that aggressive agents, [such as] sea water [or] pollutant gas, cannot attack the core of a cable through the connector, or even short-circuit strands of this cable.
In a known manner, only connectors of the male type are hermetic. For simplification, such connectors only have solid, non-fragile contact parts. They are in practice made by melting a powder, or microbeads, of glass, which assures the "setting" of the metallic male pins (solid) in a pierced insulating support, for example, of ceramic, as well as providing hermeticity along the passage of the pin in the support. The solid character of the pins permits them to support a fabrication method that would require a temperature resistance capable of reaching up to 900.degree. (high temperature of glass melting). The ceramic support is itself mounted in a connector casing, for example of stainless steel, during this melting step. This mode of embodiment with glass bonding confers a high quality of hermeticity to the connection assembly. No fluid is then able to penetrate through the support or through the interstices between the support and the set pins, or between the support and the casing.
In contrast, female connection assemblies can only be qualified as sealed assemblies. In fact, these female assemblies must have hollow components to receive the male pins of a complementary connector. These hollow components do not have the same rigidity as the male pins and must in contrast show a certain flexibility. This flexibility is not of a nature to permit the hollow components to resist the stresses that are exerted on them during the melting of glass. As a result, the method of "setting" used must be different, and the hermeticity qualities are inferior.
Moreover, it is not possible to render these hollow components more rigid, since such connection assemblies can have from one to several hundred connection points. The space that they occupy must therefore be as small as possible, and devices designed for hermeticity must occupy the smallest possible space. As a result, for reasons of miniaturization, the hollow components are close to one another and since they are thin, they are not very resistant.
In order to resolve these problems of herneticity, in the invention, a connection assembly is made, which has, on the one hand, a hermetic male connector, and, on the other hand, an electrical insert "two times female", preferably of the sealed type and of very small size. This "two times female" insert comes to be positioned on the protuberant pins of the male connector via the first receptacle access that it has. Then, by other access places of these receptacles, and face to face with the first, it offers a female connection solution. In this manner, the connector will become elongated. This is not disruptive, since this elongation is developed in the direction of a cable to be coupled. In contrast, this solution has for an essential effect to procure qualities of hermeticity (that of the male connector) without increasing the diameter of the female connection assembly made, while minimizing the overall length of this assembly. It therefore remains totally compatible with existing connectors. The hermeticity of the male connector thus leads to the hermeticity of the assembly.
In the invention, the female insert is characteristic, since it has a set of double-access receptacles. In a preferred variant, one of these accesses of the receptacle is provided with an inner elastic conductor tube or clip. A male connector pin is then inserted inside the tube in the receptacle.
The invention therefore has for an object a female connection assembly, characterized in that it has a hermetic male connector provided with protuberant pins, and a double female insert placed in the connector, this insert having a set of double-access conductor receptacles.